May 14, 2009

Your Brain on the Brain is Better than Your Brain on Drugs

3 months since my last blog post…Too bad I can’t fire myself.

Recently I’ve taken to using a new application alongside MindManager. That’s noteworthy, because I’m not the type who tends to play with new programs for the hell of it. It’s called TheBrain. For those of you who don’t know, it’s in essence a visual database. Why I like it is because it caters to my innate laziness. Though theBrain can be used as a full fledge data suppository repository (Read: Real Work), I’ve taken advantage of one killer feature that takes about5 minutes to put robustly into place: The ability to visually navigate the folder structure of your computer.

I’m gonna make this short & sweet because the Lakers are on right now. And I’ll likely talk more about theBrain in the coming months/years. Even if you never went beyond the recommended steps below, you’ll get one helluva a lot of benefit out of theBrain from using this technique alone…

Open theBrain and File Explorer next to each other. Drag one of your mission critical folders from File Explorer into theBrain as a main topic directly off of the central topic.

That’s it. Use theBrain to quickly navigate from folder to folder, file to file. If you use my VSS template set, try navigating it with theBrain. Like a Ferrari for your filing system. As Pac said, ‘Picture me rollin’.

I like to have theBrain and MindManager open next to each other. See how it works with your screen real-estate. For the record, I think these two play nicely. Both companies should sooo buy me a steak dinner for believing that.

If you’re motivated, take a look at theBrain website, where they’ve stocked it out with learning materials. Also the blog is killer.

I hope that helps. Let me know what you think of theBrain in the comment section below. If you don’t leave a comment, my feelings will be hurt. My feelings of steel that is. Colbert forever.

A special thanks to Brian Friedlander for his ludicrous belief and subsequent encouragement that I would blog again. You win Brian.

Bill, it's too bad the comments between Plaxo and Typepad aren't synchronous. I'm sure Plaxo would rather be the portal everyone goes to to connect, so I'm not surprised it works this way. Thanks for the great links and thoughts in our Plaxo dialogue. Have a great Memorial Day!

I've used TheBrain for over 10 years, creating many different brains on different issues and areas. Since I retired a couple of years ago, I've really started to populate one brain for all things, be it the books I've read, exercise logs, home inventory, to dos, notes, contacts, purchases and warranties, etc. It is my personal database. I also use MindManager for brainstorming, checklists and presentations. My real regret with TheBrain was that I didn't make use of it even more, especially in my managerial and executive duties when I was working. Visual Thesaurus was the application that led me to TheBrain and into mindmapping.